BMRC-IRMU Partnership Updates
Do you have any update about meetings happening in your city network?
We held a city meeting in late February, we have a conference call planned for the last week in March and we will have a city network meeting in mid-April.
Do you have any update about research activities in your city network?
The KW City Network has been busy scheduling interviews with representatives of government and community organizations supporting immigrants in connection to our proposal. In addition, we have been drafting a short summary of our research initiative to share more broadly and to go on our webpage. More students and community organizations have joined our network as well.
Do you have any update on Knowledge mobilization activities (Publications, events) in your city network?
On March 1st, BMRC investigator for Kitchener/Waterloo, Dr. Jenna Hennebry, addressed an audience representing immigration service providers in the region at the Waterloo Region Immigration Forum 2018. Her presentation made explicit links between immigrant service provision and immigrants with temporary or precarious status in the region and Canada, and our collective work on resilience. This talk was an important step in bringing awareness of BMRC | IRMU ongoing research efforts and has led to increased interest in participating in our network activities.
The event was organized by a member our KW City Network, Tara Bedard, the Executive Director of the KW Immigration Partnership, and panellists included Dr. Hennebry, Debbie Douglas, Executive Director of the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, and Dave Jaworsky, Mayor of Waterloo along with others representing community and business organizations in the region.
Do you have any external updates that you want to promote to the partnership(external events, call for proposals)
The IMRC is organizing a talk next Monday 26 (12:30pm-1:30pm) called “ Narratives of Central American Migrants Living in Mexican Limbo: A Talk with Stacey Wilson-Forsberg” at the Balsillie School of International Affairs (Rm 1-43). The talk focuses on Large-scale Central American migration to the United States. The Northern Triangle region of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras continues to suffer from poor political and socioeconomic conditions, including some of the world’s highest homicide rates and widespread gang violence, which drive ongoing migration toward the north. This presentation will focus on the estimated thousands of Central American migrants who stay in Mexico and do not reach the coveted "north". Informed by an anti-oppressive theoretical framework and the first-person narratives of migrants residing temporarily in shelters in central Mexico, the presentation will explore how Central American migrants from the Northern Triangle negotiate through the new environment in Mexico, including economic survival, violations of basic human rights, and the bureaucratic hurdles of making asylum claims.
